


Johnny on the Spot

by feldman



Category: Farscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-30
Updated: 2011-04-30
Packaged: 2017-10-18 20:07:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after "John Quixote": tag-team sexual healing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Johnny on the Spot

"Screw love, old man. Screw the pain and the responsibility and whatever dren we're about to find ourselves in tomorrow." Chiana punctuates each noun with the thunk and scrape of crates onto the cart. "For a few arns, I wish I could just leave it all behind for a good long frell."

He stops to tease her, bracing a stasis crate against his leg. "You sound like you're looking for a volunteer."

"Maybe." Her shoulders shift like an itch and she smirks. "Might clear your head."

"So to speak." He smiles, hands her the last crate. "The pause that refreshes?"

"You've said so yourself." She loads it onto the cart, shoves a few to even out the weight. "'Drop your stones' for an arn or two, Crichton, give yourself a rest."

"Get your rocks off, Chi."

"Exactly." She turns back to him with a game blob in her hand and her game face on. It's her old sex-kitten approach but twitchier and lower to the ground. More like a feral-kitten.

She doesn't speak so he states the obvious. "It's a game blob."

"It's the porn one."

He adds another crate to the cart. "Thanks, but no more fun and wigglies for me, Sancho."

She tilts and rocks, staring at the blob on her outstretched palm. The sex kitten is totally gone. "I. I uh," She looks up at him and breaks into a smile, brittle and then softer. "I noticed that it, uh...it has a Rider mode."

"Rider mode? I don't understand. You just wanna watch?"

"No, I...I wanna feel." Her angles write glyphs in the air. "I can't...I've tried but it's not working right. I didn't want to think about it, before, I didn't miss it." Her voice is shrinking, and he leans over the blob to hear her. "I miss my nelli, Crichton. I miss sex. I need you to remind me what it feels like."

He unloads his words like crates from the pod. "You want...to come along for a ride...while I..."

"Yeah."

"Brought to you by the makers of I-Yensch, I guess?" He takes the blob and manipulates it, milks out a series of clicks and squeaks. "And you'll feel what I'm feeling?"

"Pretty neat, huh?" She takes his other hand and rolls it between her own, breaking the sweaty seal between leather and skin.

"You know, I had a discussion with Aeryn once about manual adjustment of fluid levels versus one night stands."

"And?" She peels off the glove and blows on his damp palm. He lets her dry the soft flesh between his fingers with her breath, watching her like she's taking out a splinter.

"We agreed not to let lust get in the way of our blossoming love."

"Sounds boring." She cradles his hand, dusky against the monochrome. She's not so fidgety.

"I thought of it as a Compact of Mutual Self-Gratification." He should take his hand away, but he can't decide if he wants to. The touch feels nice for a change. "Good for the fantasy life if nothing else."

"I'll bet." She brings his hand to her mouth and takes the meaty base of his thumb between her teeth.

He stashes the blob in a side pocket of his jacket. "Pip."

"What?" She gives his palm a lick.

"I do care about you-"

"Shut up, Crichton." She pulls the front of his shirt out of his pants.

"No, Chiana." He dips his head down, tries to shift her attention to his eyes. "I do love you, just not in that way."

"In what way?"

He ignores the spirograph patterns she's tracing in the hair on his belly, the change in blood flow that she's conjuring. "I'm not in love with you."

"Well that's something to be thankful for, because I'm not in love with anyone." She slips her hand under his waistband, her fingertips skittering around what she finds. "But this is something we can share."

Sensation breaches the laka calm, and his skin answers her touch with an ache for more. His raw need is sudden, painful, a liability like a wound. He imagines burying his face in her hair, pushing himself inside her and rocking until he doesn't feel this anymore. So much vulnerability spilling from her gentle touch. He doesn't have time to deal with this now. His fingers circle her wrist, careful to catch and not crush as he yanks her hand out of his pants. "Pip, I'm not fit company for anyone right now."

She draws a breath to speak.

He turns away from her, ends the conversation.

She says it anyway, the name like a finger flick to the back of his neck. "Grazya."

He rips the latch off a stasis crate and whips it into the far dark end of the bay. It clatters and skids, but isn't enough. He sends an explosive "FUCK!" after it.

She stands at his right and stares into the shadows, soaking up the echo.

He probably gouged Moya's keracrete floor. He'd purposefully aimed away from the walls, because he knows Moya wouldn't feel a blow to her floor. Damage control. "I'm not the guy to help you out. I'm sorry."

She threads her arm around his waist and sets the side of her hip into his. "Neither of us can dance anymore, old man."

"Walking wounded." There's a tight ache in his chest where comforting stillness used to be, and he misses it. But she's solid against him and he feels grounded, if not calm. He curls his fingers around the sharp edge of her shoulder, lets the weight of his arm pull her closer.

"Frelling shame, that." She tips her head against his, dirty hair tickling his ear. "Hey."

"Yeah?"

She moves her weight from foot to foot, rocking him side to side. "Isn't there something we usually do when this kind of thing happens?"

"Fuck it up? Muddle through?"

"Help each other."

He sets his hand on his breast pocket, on the laka between his hand and his heart. "Listen...Grandmama Addams has some stuff, it may help you forget."

She removes his hand from her shoulder, brushing her lips against his knuckles before she lets go. "I don't want to forget. If I forget, it might happen again. I just want to remember the good side of it too." She takes her hand from his waist, nudges him with her shoulder. "I want to remember fun. Do you remember fun, Crichton?"

His laugh escapes through the tension. "That's a good question, darlin'."

~*~

He's naked to the recirculated breeze, but his reach for the blanket is halted by the four point restraints. "Shit."

Natira struts around the foot of the bed. Pink satin shines like a cellophane wrapper over her exoskeleton, and the furry bunny ears set between her head spikes remind him of a rabbit caught in a rototiller.

He cranes his neck until he finds Harvey, sitting at the table in a brocade smoking jacket this time around. Since he was removed his residue's been in every one of these dreams but at least it doesn't talk much. He addresses Natira's sashaying pink ass. "You know, we can always switch places. I got a whole merit badge for knot-tying that's going to waste."

Harvey pulls her onto his lap and sweeps his hand toward the bed. "Play ball!"

Grayza nestles into the crook of his thighs, wearing a soft flowing black dress that's meant to be feminine and non-threatening but makes her look like an evil Wednesday Addams. She plants her elbows on either side of his hips and lays her hands and chin on his belly. She pouts at him, sensuous and petulant and cruel. "Have you missed me?"

His arms are pinned out so tight he has to move his shoulders to get any slack in the straps. The sense of dream is lost, panic writhes with lust, and he tries to turn both into anger. "With every shot so far."

"I wouldn't say that." She sighs, reminding him that he's caught between her breasts and that she considers his dick to be the same thing as his soul. "I recall you scored a direct hit several times." She slinks backward, freeing him to the cold air.

He tries to turn himself away from her but hardens in her hand. "Target practice." He's wearing sore spots on his wrists, so he focuses on cracking his knuckles instead.

"Hmmm." She escalates the point/counterpoint by taking one of his testicles into her mouth.

"Crichton, look what I've got."

He looks up to see Chiana kneeling between his head and the wall, wearing a silver headset with a small blue light reflecting in one black eye. She puts the other headset on him, brushing his hair away from the contact points and arranging it--just so--like a tiara. He sees himself in her eyes, sees his own blue light flicker on like a winking star.

"I, uh...didn't expect company, Pip." He concentrates on her and tries to ignore Grayza's humming. "Place's a mess." She can't really be humming anyway, he's so deep in her throat.

"Doesn't matter, Crichton." Chiana shifts her knees back and leans low over his head. She whispers in his ear, "Survival matters. You can rebuild later. She'll leave once she gets what she wants."

Heat pools and spreads in his body like exhaust in a closed garage. "I don't want to give it to her." Tension gathers sickening sweet in his belly. The soles of his feet tingle, all his lifeblood filling the cock in Grayza's throat. "Free my hands, Chi."

She sets a kiss on his head like an offering and hovers over him, a blue light special angel witnessing his shame.

"Chiana!" He lifts his head as far as it will go, so close that her two eyes resolve into one convex plane reflecting the light of the room like a sparse starfield. "Free. My. Hands."

"Stop whining Crichton. It's not as bad as the Chair, is it?" From his perspective, her smile is upside down. "It's not like it means you're a slut or anything, does it?"

Natira strides up to the bed and turns his face toward her with clawtips on his chin. "Animal." She swirls her martini, a speared eyeball rotating in the alcohol like a biology class specimen in a jar. "The purpose of the male of any species is to spread seed. Why do you resist?"

He grits his teeth in a smile. His whole body ticks with his pulse, thirsty for release, but he fights it for as long as he can. "Let me break her neck...then I'll be satisfied."

She tilts her head and a bloody limp bunny paw slips between her head spikes and flops against her temple. "I would like to see you try." She sets down her drink and unshackles his right hand.

He shakes the metal off and grabs at Grayza's head as if to pull off a leech. She slides down farther, works him with hands and throat, and his fingers knot in warm hair. Resistance dissolves. He's about to come at her command.

~*~

The sleep crust is sharp as glass when he cleans his eyes. He rolls onto his stomach and reaches down to lay his hand on the cool floor. His jacket is folded laka side in and slung over the back of the chair. The game blob bulges in the side pocket like a cramped erection, like his own underneath him.

Hey Georg, we will cruise for foxy Nebari chicks with our huuuge American buuul-ges.

Back on Elack, he thought a lot about Aeryn. He didn't think very much about sex itself. Like a hermit in the desert, he gave his body the minimum upkeep, plus alcohol. Focus requires that you ignore distractions. The downside is that anything and everything you set aside can and will be used against you; your pulse pistol, your girlfriend, your very own dick.

He went looking for Aeryn horny as a bridegroom and Grayza used his libido like a leash.

So after Arnessk, he added beating off to the pre-flight morning routine. In the shower, between the dentic and the razor, a cheerless grasping and jerking, over in a few minutes as he stares at the smooth golden wall and listens to himself breathe. Like a sneeze. Like eating a food cube when you're hungry. Like stretching until your back cracks, nothing more. Regular manual adjustment of fluid levels, for safety in combat.

He should go and do this now. He does not.

It's not enough. It's not what he needs.

~*~

She racks the privacy curtain back but doesn't open her cell door. "What do you want, Crichton?"

He holds up the game blob.

"Keep it."

He thumbs the re-set button so that it chirps as he dances it back and forth like a kewpie doll. "If you hit re-set, it changes the direction of input. Do you think between the two of us we can help each other along?"

Her gaze drops from his eyes to his crotch. He remembers her fingers fluttering like butterflies behind his fly and he stiffens as she watches.

"Two-man sack race. You up for it?"

She opens the cell door.

~*~

"If you thought it would have ended the game, would you have frelled the Princess right in front of me and Stark?"

He takes her arm and peels the glove away, tugging it off her fingers and tossing it aside. "She wasn't the Princess."

"Of course not." The skin of her wrist is cool against his lips, the texture familiar but the taste has more salt. He'd always thought of her as sweet like bombpops or antifreeze, but she's snackable nonetheless.

"Besides." He doesn't lick the salt away, figuring it will help conduction. "The game wasn't real."

The blob adheres to her wet skin like a postage stamp. "And the only Princess we've ever had was Jool."

"Speak for yourself, babe, I never had Jool." He gives his inner forearm a lick with his salty tongue and guides her arm over his, cradling her elbow in his hand. He realizes that he's treating this more like jumping her battery than jumping her bones. He tries to crack his neck but it won't go.

"Let me." Her free hand wraps around the back of his neck, gloved and cool against the skin. She massages gently at first, then steps closer and tips his head down to rest on hers. He closes his eyes and she works the muscles more deeply, down between the shoulder blades and up the back of his head.

She pulls back. "It's not set right, it's in a feedback loop."

He checks the display lights. "Looks good to me." He wiggles his toes. "Did you feel that?"

She looks down at his boot. "Yeah." She rests her forehead against his, licks her bottom lip and lets it slide from under her teeth. "You're nervous. I didn't think you got nervous anymore."

His fingers burrow into the hair at the nape of her neck, oily soft like duck feathers. He offers a charming Max Headroom smile. "I'm nervous all the time, Pip."

"I thought that was just me." She smiles back, dimple creases framing her mouth like cynical quote marks.

"You're here to borrow a cup of sex, Chi. It's like cooking dinner for Betty Crocker."

"Think of it this way, you're cooking dinner for a starving friend."

"You're sex on a stick, Chiana. You're a Sweet-Tart." He's tracking her mouth with his, just an inch away, letting her feel the heat of his breath. "You're la petite morte in black leather boots."

"I can feel you're hungry for it, too." She rubs her cheek against his. "You need it just like I do."

"You haven't lost it, Chi, you've just misplaced it. We'll find it." He drifts up her cheek to her temple, then down toward her ear, the words an excuse to skim his lips against her skin. She has a malty scent and is softer than flannel. "You're a butter pecan chocolate double-dip ice cream headache of porny thoughts. You've got an honorary Ph.D. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. You're pro'ly gonna give me a heart attack."

His suckling kisses bring the heat of her blood to the surface of her skin, and for a moment he's startled by the blue tinge. Nothing warm in that color. Then he thinks of a pot on a stove, blue flames licking at a copper bottom and it parses.

She draws in a breath, feeling his arousal through the blob as if it were her own. She responds and feeds it, sliding her hand round to grasp the cheek of his ass, and slipping her tongue around his she nips his lower lip.

He pulls back. "Careful."

Her tongue curls up in front of her teeth and she nods, looking at his mouth and not his eyes. "Right."

Her mouth is so hot against his neck that it takes a moment for him to feel that his skin is between her teeth. She draws back with a scrape and moves toward his ear.

"Nuh-uh." He sweeps her feet with one leg and falls with her to the bed. A grab, a press, a twist, and his thighs are between her knees, bright black eyes wide with a shock that stills them both.

"I'm not meat. No biting, Chi."

"Then take some of this from me."

He furrows his brow but she doesn't explain, just reaches for the blob and makes it chirp. Now the flow of sensation is moving from Chiana into him.

He feels a pull in his belly and groin like extra gravity, a sweet hunger that makes the small of his back arch and he leans into it, bracing his elbows straight. He grinds slowly into the well of her hips and the heat coming through his leathers is nothing like the heat inside the both of them, arousal and anger burning like a fire inside a wall.

He takes one of her wrists and pushes it into the mattress above her head. There's a flex, and the gravity pull tightens.

Fascinated by the fluctuation, he catches her other hand and pins it. Something crackles, distracting, sparking like a stripped wire. Underneath it all, arousal pulls with the momentum of a train gathering speed. She nips his forearm.

Both of her hands are caught in one of his own, effortless as a waitress slinging coffee mugs. He tightens his grip. "I said, no biting."

She bares her teeth in a smile, surges beneath him. He pins with his weight, feels her heat bleed into his body from the outside as anger flows into him from within.

Somehow she works a leg just right, inching it underneath his own like a hound digging under a fence. The anger recedes. Her eyebrows disappear under her bangs and she draws a deep breath, the edge of a smile breaking. Laughter boils over from her into him, feeding his excitement, breathing into it as if they're letting loose with a scream on a rollercoaster.

She drills him square in the nuts, and rolls him off of her.

He curls around himself like burning paper, one hand reaches to his balls and the other hand still gripped on the game and her arm. His thumb searches for the right spot on the blob, jams it hard, and the flow of input reverses.

He feels better immediately.

She chokes on her gasping laughter and tries to pull away from him. He's still locked on her forearm. She hitches like a cat with a furball and gags. She pries the game from under his fingers, tearing it from her arm.

He lets go, and she topples off the bed. Her hair flies about as she throws her whole body into the spasm and spews like a debutant on her bedroom floor. His chuckle sounds too much like a whimper, so he stops.

The blob sits squidgy and pink on the shiny bedspread like a Playboy photo-shoot gone to hell.

~*~

He runs the water as cold as it will go and leans down to drink straight from the tap. The spatter of water is the only noise apart from Moya's living hum. Even this early in the sleep cycle there is no one else about. He fills a cup and sits at the table to think, but nothing comes to him except Chi.

There's a hitch in her stride when she sees him, but she continues to the cooling unit, opens the door, and drops into a crouch to study the remnants in the fruit bin. No posed bend at the hips, no extra wiggle in the ass. One of her gloves is gone. She straightens up with a bjork in her hand. At least, he's been calling them bjorks because he can't fit the extra l and g around his tongue.

"Hey." He scoots down the bench, making room for her at the big table.

"Hey." She steps onto the bench and sits on the table. "I'm sorry."

From this angle, in the light, her cheeks have lost their baby softness. She looks less like a cheerleader and more like a woman. Beautiful and strange like Zhaan. "I know."

She bruises the fruit between her hands, stubby fingernails the color of new jeans. "Every hear of akreeya?"

He rolls the cup, dancing the bottom edge in the puddle of condensation. "Can't say I have."

"They're carnivorous. Big shaggy things, like to disembowel their prey." She stabs her thumbnail into the rind and rips through. "Saw a show once, a handler with four akreeya, he made 'em do tricks. Very famous. Kind of like F'Tor. Nerri and I saw his last show." She peels the fruit, fingers quick as a pit crew.

He watches her hands, the sweet acidic smell of the fruit reminds him of sour patch kids. "They have cotton candy at this circus?"

"Nah." She sections the fruit, naked and bright red in her fingers. "But the akreeya ate well. They got tired of doing tricks." She pops a piece into her mouth, sucks the juice from her thumb.

He wants to taste the stain on her lip. Instead, he takes her ungloved hand into his own. She doesn't lift it away, so he strokes the underside of her wrist.

"Frell." She looks down at their hands. "You're the only one on this frelling ship who understands."

"Understands what?" The tactile memory of girl lust tightens in his belly. The bench squeaks back as he stands.

"That skin is there to be touched."

He sets the fruit aside, pulls her to her feet. "If that's true, then why do you wear the gloves?"

"Same reason you do. It's not there to be handled by just anyone."

He presses her hands against his stomach.

"I don't want to make you do tricks, Crichton."

"That's turn tricks."

Her hands are still, and she blinks as she stares at them.

"Listen. I'll let you drive it wherever you want to take it, wherever you need to go. Just take me somewhere nice."

Despite their habit of close-talking, despite the fact that his lips are chapped from hers, she comes in slow and lets him correct for angle. Maybe she's giving him another chance to back out.

~*~

He picks up the game blob and it warms in his hand. He runs through the settings, like a geek playing with his Casio watch instead of kissing the girl. She moves into his personal space and nuzzles his neck gently, testing each inch like a soldier crawling through a minefield. She's restrained and precise, as if she's trying to de-fuse a bomb using just her lips and her little pink tongue.

He pulls his head up. Her mouth is parted, eyes closed. She's waiting for something awful, her neck exposed and her breathing shallow and fast. She doesn't open her eyes when she says, "I trust you."

His hand is low on her back, on the curving plane of her ass. He rocks his weight from foot to foot, studying her. "No, you don't."

She smiles, still hiding her eyes. He's going to need a whole new set of fantasies to match her now. Less giggling. "But I want to. That's close enough, right?"

"Well let's see," he threads the fingers of her left hand in his right and begins leading her in a box step. "Close counts in nuclear war...horseshoes...hand grenades...but handjobs might be pushing it."

~*~

She's leading now, backing him slowly toward the bed as he kisses her and she unbuckles his belt.

"Go on."

She peels his t-shirt off and wets his nipples with her tongue, letting the ventilation harden them while she returns to the kiss. Her hands survey and terraform the black leather topography of his crotch, rubbing him with the soft liner layer of his PK pants. The liner resists puncturing, wicks away heat, and is slippery to increase maneuverability, like a cat moving around in its skin. He wonders briefly if the other him ever experienced the recreative possibilities.

Chiana strokes the full length of him right through the pants, rolling him in silky friction from balls to tip. He hooks his fingers into the laces of her corset and pulls her into a deeper kiss. A sound gets caught between them and squeaks from her throat as his name, his first name, the one she treats as his secret name.

Her hands are caught between them but she's deft as a pickpocket. She pops the fasteners of his pants one by one like an airlock cycling. He stops unlacing to run his tongue along the rim of her ear and to whisper, "I've got some lutra oil in a bottle under the pillow. I think you'll like the effect."

~*~

He holds the game against the bare skin of her thigh and watches her from below. It's anime colored sex, his skin copper red against the soft grey of her undershorts, his cock nearly purple in her hands. Too rough, for a second he's mishandled. She's not respecting the barrier between intensity and pain. His fingers dig into the white muscle of her thigh, the game lodged under his palm. His other hand goes for her wrist.

She eases up, locks into the feedback system. One of them says, "Here."

The pain fades, and intensity becomes pleasure. She lets her head fall back and she squeezes him like she was born with his cock in her hand.

She rides the border of overkill closer than a lover could, akin to self-abuse. Her hands vary the rhythm and pressure, letting the pleasure build and sink in. Supersaturated colors flare behind his eyelids and he hears his moan echo from her throat. He rests his free hand just below her hip, smooth skin under trembling fingers.

He slides the tips of his fingers under the short leg of her shorts. He won't last very long.

She finds the edge of orgasm, and she slows. Deliberate strokes without pattern, fingers swirling and her heels and toes kneading the backs of his thighs. She's set up camp at the edge of the cliff, and no matter how he bucks and twists, he can't throw them over. Just when he feels the inevitable, she reigns him back in with a squeeze. She's knocking him into higher and higher energy levels and the photon he's going to release when he drops back into his home shell just might kill him.

She's not playing fair.

He rolls his own nipples one by one to see hers tighten, indigo blue and out of reach because she's bending up and back. He brings his knees up to hold her and she arches against them. She starts to keen.

This is what he would sound like if he were a girl.

She misses the squeeze this time and picks up speed, barreling like a runaway train, like a budong rising out of the dust, no stopping it now and he's going to fly apart but at least he knows for certain that she's with him because she's locked and starting to twitch like a woman getting shock therapy and he brings his hand down around hers and shows her how to ride the wave for maximum velocity.

White on white.

It hits like cannonballing off the high dive into orgasm. Stars shoot into his vision. All sensation collapses to the center and thrums out again, radiating pleasure in bursts that echo. His heels, his head, strike the bed as if to emphasize the point.

His lungs are churning, catching up to the rest of his body.

His ears are ringing.

There's hair tickling his nose.

She's fallen onto his chest, curled over their slippery sticky hands. Every few seconds she flicks the hypersensitive spot right under her thumb, making them both gasp and jerk with sensory overload.

He's heavy and thrumming. The air reeks with the phosphorous scent of things growing in the dark, of mushroom spores and secret overgrown places. Of reaching through the broken edges and retrieving something precious from the wreckage. His breathing slows into sleep. They share a fierce yawn.

She lifts her head and looks up at him with a wicked grin. "Too tired to go again, old man?"

He disables the game and peels it from her thigh. "It's like a roller-coaster, Chi. You wanna ride again you gotta go to the back of the line."

"Oh." She rises up on her knees. "Humans too, huh?" The rocking of her hips is a slow and delicate thing.

He extricates her hands from his softening cock. "I'm going to ignore the TMI factor here and just say yes."

"And females?" She licks her palm, intent on the taste.

"My experience is mixed."

She rises off of him, her hair plastered up on one side with his sweat, but otherwise unruffled. "Yeah, I'll bet." She washes in the basin and rubs at her hair with a piece of toweling.

"And a gentleman never tells." He shifts up onto his elbows. "You're leaving me with the wet spot?"

"What spot?" She looks puzzled, then gasps a laugh. "Crichton, you are the wet spot." She runs water over the toweling and walks back to the bed. He reaches for it but she kneels up next to him and cleans him from belly to thigh. She used hot water on the towel and her touch lets the warmth sink in. She throws it over her shoulder and it hits the floor with a slap.

He's about to ask her if she does that at home when she lays a white hand on his chest. "Thank you."

He takes her wrist and pulls her down. He tries to spoon around her but she burrows under him so she's on her back and he's curled around her. Each of them can see the door, the privacy curtain stirred by the vent just overhead. He rubs his cheek in the honest sweat of her chest and listens to the odd skipping beat of what he assumes is her heart.

She hitches a deep sigh and his head rides her chest like a wave. The stiff joint at the base of his skull cracks like a knuckle.

Tension drains from him with each tick, each breath as if she's bailing water out of his boat to a jazz rhythm. It's not what he wants, but it's safe and it's something he needs. "It's strange, the things you miss."

"Yeah." She skitters her fingers through his hair. "You should never have cut your hair."

"I'm not thinking clearly these days. My decisions suck."

"When have they not sucked?" She laughs, bouncing his head. Her fingers move through his hair, alternately backcombing and smoothing down. "I came looking for you in the burial space. You know why?"

He says it like he's responding to a knock-knock joke. "Why?" Why did the Chi cross the road?

"Because everyone's looking for you, Crichton, but they can't find you. I can find you, but they can't. Safest place to be is with you."

 

Little Betty Blue  
Lost her holiday shoe  
What can little Betty do?  
Give her another  
To match the other  
And then she may walk in two  
\--Mother Goose

**Author's Note:**

> Great thanks to Sunshiner for incisive yet tender beta on this story, my first foray into explicit fic.
> 
> 2nd place, 2004 Sparky Awards: John/Chiana NC-17


End file.
